


The Will

by Goodnightsammy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Fluff, TROS Fix IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23524708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodnightsammy/pseuds/Goodnightsammy
Summary: Prompt: Redeemed Ben is given what Leia left him in her will (authors choice on what!) and Rey comforts him?
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	The Will

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the wonderful yenneferofyengerberg for this amazing prompt.

Rey knocked on the door of Ben’s cell—a courtesy more than anything—before it opened with a shallow hiss. He had been kept in a containment room at the Resistance base since they returned from Exegol, by some miracle still alive and breathing if not a little worse for wear. The room was small and white-walled, containing only the necessities—a small cot off to the side, a sink, and in the corner, a small ‘fresher.

Ben looked up as she entered, “has the council made their decision?”

“No,” Rey shook her head. A new makeshift Senate had formed in the weeks after that great final war, and the debate over what would become of the Supreme Leader still stretched on. Planets were calling for his blood, even as those who were long thought to be legend vouched for him from beyond the grave. “They read it today,” she finished, settling down next to Ben on the cot.

“Read what?” He asked, dark brow furrowed as he stared down at her through his messy strands of hair. There was exhaustion in his eyes—a sort of dull grey that ate away at the dark chocolate of his irises—and the bend in his shoulders held a weight of guilt that only execution could free him from. Rey knew he was wishing for his own damnation more than anything, and it had resulted in a single bitter, drawn out fight between them that had lasted days. It was in one final screaming match that Ben had admitted to her, brokenly, that he couldn’t live with what he had done, couldn’t live with the person he saw when he looked in the mirror, and she hadn’t brought it up again after that.

“Her will,” Rey answered, and it was then that Ben flicked his eyes down to the small box she had sitting on her lap.

“Is that,” Ben began, the words catching in his throat, “for me?”

“Mmm mmm,” she confirmed with a hum, turning the box around in her hands, “she didn’t have much to leave anyone, but she made it explicitly clear that you should have this.”

Ben reached out for the box slowly, unsure of what might be inside. He hadn’t known his mother to be the sentimental type, always buried in her work or determined toward some path that didn’t involve looking back, couldn’t. He pulled the lid off as Rey watched, curious eyes hungry to see what might be waiting underneath.

Ben sucked in a sharp breath, “oh. I didn’t think—I thought she hadn’t kept it.”

“What is it?” Rey prodded lightly, twisting to get a view inside. It was a—a rock? Her expression fell slightly, confusion twisting her features.

Ben took one of his large hands and reached in to pull out the small stone. It rested in his palm, a little, worn thing. The color was a faded sort of green, like it could have been a gemstone in another life.

“I asked her once,” Ben breathed, eyes staring through the rock as if he were looking into another time, another place, “I asked her why she wasn’t a Jedi, like Luke. I was young then,” he explained. He rolled the stone over between his fingers as he spoke, “she told me it was because she didn’t have a lightsaber—that all Jedi needed a lightsaber. She was joking, of course, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

Rey listened quietly by his side, the only sounds being his voice and the low hum of current on the air

“So, I asked Luke—this was before I began training with him—I asked him what you needed for a lightsaber. He said at its heart was a Kyber Crystal—a beautiful stone that channeled the Force. So, I went looking. I thought—if I could find her a crystal, she could be a Jedi, just like him. I found this one and brought it to her a few days later. She was so confused,” he chuckled then, a warm, deep thing as the memory surrounded him, “she had no idea why I was so proud, beaming up at her as if I had done something magnificent. I thought I had. I explained to her that I had gotten her a Kyber Crystal—it wasn’t one, isn’t one, obviously, but I didn’t know that. She could be a real Jedi, just like Luke. It was then that she told me. She said, _I had my chance once, Ben. A real lightsaber too._ ”

Rey nodded to herself, thinking of the twin blue sabers tucked away in her room. One had been hers so many years ago.

“I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t—why she decided not to. Why wouldn’t anyone want to be a Jedi? Ha,” he scoffed then, the laughter turning bitter, “if only I had known. But she looked at me, she told me— _there are more important things than the Jedi, Ben. One day you’ll know this. One day you’ll be willing to give up everything to protect the people you love.”_ He stopped then, curling his fingers into a tight fist around the stone. Rey felt his body shake next to hers as low, aching sobs ripped out of him. “She gave it all up for me, you know?” He said through ragged gasps of air, “she could have been brilliant.”

“She would do anything for you, Ben. She never, for a second lost hope in you,” Rey soothed him, reaching out across the space between them to pull him up into her arms. He curled against her chest like a child as he cried.

“I miss her,” he whispered, and the words settled into the air.

“I know,” Rey sighed, “but Ben?”

He turned his head to look at her, tears glistening, caught on his thick, dark lashes.

“No one is ever really gone.”


End file.
